Chérie, you can have your baby and drink your wine, too! That’s the parenting model espoused by the French.Elizabeth Lippman

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How great is it being a mom in France? To hear one author tell it, c’est magnifique!

French mothers “do not intend to give up any aspect of their lives,” insists professional provocateur Elisabeth Badinter, whom you can almost hear smoking as she writes.

Par exemple: Breast-feeding, such a hot topic in the States, is largely seen as a ball and chain. “Bottle-feeding mean[s] a woman has freedom of movement,” Badinter writes, “and could be replaced as her child’s caregiver, therefore restoring the ability to be both mother and woman.”

In other words, motherhood is a light, part-time gig for French women — unlike their American counterparts, who are often 24/7 robots devoted solely to raising their young.

In “The Conflict: How Modern Motherhood Undermines the Status of Women,” out now, Badinter claims that in the past 30 years, Western women — with the exception of the French — have moved away from championing equal rights and regressed to stay-at-home motherhood and years-long, on-demand breast-feeding, all in the service of what she labels “maternalism.”

In the past 20 years, she writes, “There was a powerful swing toward celebrating the sublime state of motherhood as women’s true destiny, the condition for their happiness and the source of their power.”

As a result, once-ambitious New York women lose their identity after giving birth: “ ‘I want everything’ becomes ‘I must do everything for my child.’ ”

To even suggest otherwise, she writes, “would brand you as a reckless monster.” A better ideal is the French mama who gives herself time for wine, laughter, fashion, culture and — of course — sex, says Badinter.

Now some New York moms are taking issue with Badinter’s attempt to foist French norms onto a different society. “I’m getting sick of these books about how other cultures do everything better than our own,” says Forest Hills mom Elaine Cipriano, whose daughters are 3 and 6.

“I don’t think we need any more of that.”

Just three months ago, another book — “Bringing Up Bébé: One American Mother Discovers the Wisdom of French Parenting” — also trumpeted the benefits of French parenting to US moms. In it, Pamela Druckerman argues that blasé French parents raise well-behaved, mellow children who sleep through the night and willingly eat things like paté and leeks.

Attorney Fiona Schaeffer, mother of two young boys, says enough with the European snobbery. “It’s a very popular thing to bash American parents, particularly American mothers,” she says. “There’s a new book out every year. One year it’s the Chinese Tiger Mom, the next year it’s the French model.”

And, some say, what is so great about the French model anyway? “Just because kids are well-behaved doesn’t mean they’re happy,” says Westchester mom Kelcey Kintner, who chronicles her adventures at The Mama Bird Diaries blog. “A young kid who can sit through a long adult dinner is not necessarily a happy child.”

Schaeffer suspects it’s not all quite as laissez faire as the French might have you think, anyway. “I don’t know how easygoing French parents are,” she says. “I mean, the fact that they get their kids to behave in restaurants, I’ve never seen that achieved through easygoing-ness.”

Furthermore, Cipriano says, the French have a leg up on American women because of multifaceted government support — it’s not as if their having more free time is just something they’re naturally better at. “I don’t know too much about French culture, but I think the mothers get more support,” she says.

Indeed: French women get 16 weeks of paid maternity leave, government-paid nurses who make home visits to help with new babies, heavily subsidized child care and a tax deduction for in-home help. So, some moms here say, the charge that American moms aren’t “liberated” enough is a little rich.

When The Post asked Badinter about this, the author conceded that it was a valid concern, but said, “It doesn’t explain the choices of women who are free, economically, to decide whether to stay at home or not. These mothers who practice ‘intensive parenting’ are making an ideological choice.”

Kintner admits she sometimes feels more like a personal assistant to her four young kids than a mom — running around after them all day, making sure their every whim is satisfied.

It sure wasn’t this way back when she was growing up, Kintner observes ruefully. “In the ’70s,” she says, “you’d get in the car and say, ‘I’m thirsty,’ and they’d be like, ‘Great. Drink your own saliva.’ Now if you ever get in the car without drinks and snacks, your kids are floored.”

A better approach, Badinter suggests, would be letting their children work out many of their problems, and learning that life isn’t about being waited on hand and foot. Of course, “The tyranny of maternal duty is not new,” writes Badinter. What is new is the way in which maternalism brands helicopter parenting as empowerment, not obligation. “Anyone can appreciate the significance of the positive shift from a ‘duty’ to a ‘right,’ ” she writes.

But many moms says they are nowhere near as hard-core about earth-mothering as Badinter suggests. “We take these hot topics and assume everyone is doing them,” Cipriano says, “but really I think we’re all just sort of muddling through the day.”

Art Yuen, of the New York branch of Attachment Parenting International, says the moms she hears from seem to enjoy taking the plunge into parenthood (the group encourages breast-feeding, co-sleeping and “baby-wearing,” which promotes slings over strollers). “I haven’t had anyone come to us and say, ‘What were you thinking when you wrote the API principles? Didn’t you know women were going to be set back?’ ” she says.

Manhattanite Elizabeth Hines, mom to a young daughter, goes one step further — pointing out that Badinter is just another expert telling women what to do. “The whole point of the [women’s rights] movement was that women should have the choice,” Hines says. “The point was not to make everyone follow one path.”